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Published on Leave a comment on Stuck in the Mud: Rule by One Perspective and The Unmoving of Motivation

All we have to go by

The meaning of every word is its own universe to explore. And so is the meaning of every situation. Storytelling! Exactly. Fun because situations and the words we use to describe them are alive with ideas. Working and playing with ideas to figure stuff out, to be useful, creative, and silly, livens up every day. Writing! Thinking with feeling that wants to be shared in writing. Because Mind’s ideas are a precious gift, and gifts want to be given. Shared.

Thinking ideas and sharing them describes the role of Mind in Creation. The “Creator.” Following its example can put meaning and purpose, fun and satisfaction, into our lives if we choose it. What if we don’t? Thinkers, writers, and artists would stop thinking, writing, and creating because they would have no new ideas to share.

Being smart and talented isn’t enough? Two exceptionally smart and talented people I knew aced every test of academic and professional aptitude, yet it wasn’t enough. Something essential was missing in their approach to life’s work. From their perspectives, because all we have to go by is our point of view. What it tells us about ourselves and our situations. We can’t possibly grasp it all.

Learning that no force can stop

What was missing? Wanting to follow Mind’s example and make that their first priority. No matter what their task. A passion, or at least a commitment, to learning. Because that’s where meaning and purpose come from: “getting it right.” Questioning from a curiosity, a need, to understand.

What if our perspective already has the answers? Isn’t that enough? Sure, if all we need to know is what’s before our eyes. The way things are. That works so long as the way things are isn’t constantly changing and evolving. Our health, relationships, work lives, and our physical and emotional environment.

“The way things are” describes the ideas that define Creation. They can’t change. But it also refers to Creation itself. Forward movement driven by the expansion and sharing of Knowledge and Love. By evolution, because that’s the nature of learning that no force can stop. Minds can’t stop learning by questioning and reflecting if they want to keep meaning and purpose relevant. To fit the particulars of their situations to the moment.

The part missing at the core of motivation

Sticking to one perspective is navigating Los Angeles freeways with GPS programmed by trolley routes. Sailing from New York to Buenos Aires with a map drawn by Amerigo Vespucci. If we keep our one perspective current will that be enough? Trying to learn and be creative without being open to other perspectives, without using them to think, feel, imagine, and judge what our situations tell us, would be turning a project over to one skill that requires more than one skill. Asking a plumber to build a house without any help.

It may only take the talents of one artist to produce art, but the artist can’t write one line, paint one stroke, or play one note without a mind alive with the spontaneity of free association among different sources of ideas and storylines. From a variety of perspectives alive with movement instead of one perspective stuck in the mud.

The two people I knew couldn’t be creative with their talents because their definition of the way things are – their perspectives – stayed put. They never left the starting gate. Their lives didn’t end with the exuberance of creativity. With satisfaction, but with deadening disappointment, frustration. They had put the power of Mind learning, growing, and creating through different perspectives not close enough to the core of their motivation. Maybe not anywhere near their motivation.

Purposeful striving

How could that be? Humans, like theories, works of art and engineering, are compositions. We differ because our parts are composed differently. And because none of us is complete. Some parts are there and active, others missing or inactive. When we learn, grow, and create through different perspectives, we may be going about the task that put us here: filling in the missing parts. Completing ourselves.

An ideal always beyond reach so long as circumstances keep evolving. But also beyond reach if parts essential to movement forward – motivation – are missing or inactive. In one of the two examples it was the part that attracts us to work: purposeful striving. An aversion to working for a living, to putting talents to use in a career, defined this person’s perspective, life, and relationships. Earning the nickname in adolescence “Stick in the Mud.” That doesn’t sound like motivation. Just the opposite. Striving to make things different or better instead of the way things are wasn’t in this person’s genes.

The pleasure and satisfaction of relating

The other example displayed a remarkable talent for self-enablement with a variety of skills. Self-taught self-sufficiency. A self-disciplined striver who yearned for the satisfaction of accomplishment and relationships along the way. But it couldn’t happen without feeling, the part that was missing. The part that connects. Feeling connected to the objects of our passions is the payoff. The ability to feel the pleasure and satisfaction of relating. To others but also to anything we happen to love. I find satisfaction now in relating to a flow of ideas and their source.

What happened to the other person? Striving finally had to be put out of its misery. The ability to relate requires feeling and it’s central to every cause, every effort. Being Love as we all are in Reality but unable to feel and connect with it here took away the meaning and satisfaction of relationships. And with it the will, the motivation, to live. Both persons left virtually together, one missing love of work, the other missing the work of Love – connecting with feeling. Two precious lives that ended in tragedy.

Hierarchy and the allure of wildness

Definitely not how I want mine to end. What can I do? Personal relationships are perceived as either equal or unequal, level or vertical. Equal-level enables friends to share lives without either assuming superiority. Unequal-vertical is hierarchy, where one or the other does assume it. By pretending that only one perspective is possible and it's theirs. Then using it to dominate relationships with their “unshakable will.” As though “resistance is pointless” because their one unquestioned perspective makes them invincible. Indomitable.

This sounds familiar. The allure of “wildness” seduces many into choosing hierarchical. It implies being in an ideal state of no limits. A privileged state reserved for divinity. The “power of the dark side” is wildness “playing god.” If nothing can tame it then its power must be absolute. A common misconception of God as ruler for its own benefit rather than service and support for all of Creation’s benefit. Absolute. Inaccessible. Unrelatable.

Lives end in tragedy when they disconnect with unrelatability. That can be made less likely by being careful with power or authority. By understanding that hierarchy in personal relationships isn’t connection. It’s separation. It’s the arrogance and isolation of one-sidedness posing as “oneness.” In the likeness of “god.” Two-sided empowerment, like affirmation, is a necessity. For self-worth and for healthy personal relationships. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Only when one-sided hierarchical relationships turn it into empowerment for one and disempowerment for the other is it wrong.

Dad’s take on his indiscretion

Give me an example. I was at a children’s park where a parent I knew had taken his son. My age? Your age, and his name was Liam. Liam was having a good time with one of his playmates. Anyone I know? She was visiting from abroad and spoke with a thick accent. Chinese or Italian, I couldn’t tell. OK. Go on. Liam’s dad was lovable and harmless, always making people laugh. So he brought up a time when he and Liam were together and something funny happened. What?

They were surrounded by parents watching their kids play soccer when his dad cut a silent stinky one and Liam said, “Dad, did you just fart?” Now everyone was not only let in on the smell, they were let in on who did it. His dad! How embarrassing! Only for a moment, because his dad lived to make people laugh and this was funny. Now he was using it to add laughter to the fun.

Liam’s take

But immediately Liam protested that he didn’t do anything wrong. He dropped to the ground crying. His dad realized he had stepped in a cow pie and tried to recover with an explanation. But Liam was inconsolable. He had his perspective on what had happened at the soccer game and nothing could correct it. His dad would have had better luck with his playmate. The one from Mongolia? I think she was from Tuscany. Or maybe Boston’s North End. They have thick Italian accents.

There’s more? I was with Liam and his dad a few days later when his dad tried again to make amends for his mistake. By letting his son know how bad he felt and assuring him that he’d done nothing wrong. And by asking if next time Liam would say “I feel embarrassed” so his dad would stop.

Did that settle it? It settled his dad deeper into the same cow pie. Liam again protested that he’d done nothing wrong. He was still aggrieved. His response when his dad proposed a solution was “whatever.” He reacted to being given another perspective as though the whole idea was unthinkable. Irrelevant, as though his dad was changing the subject.

When friendship is irrelevant

Does this example help? Definitely! Don’t fart when you’re in a crowd. It could be making us aware that seeing things from other perspectives requires motivation before it can deliver motivation. Personality types attracted to competition, winning, and dominance assume that presenting one perspective to others, never showing interest or any desire to learn from theirs, projects strength. Makes it clear that their will can’t be shaken. That relationship with them must be hierarchical; they alone can occupy the top; and it must be on their terms.

So one sided! Absolutely. Any situation that depends on forced conformance, like a dictatorship, will have someone ruling from the top with only one perspective. “My way or the highway.” Ruling not for creativity and spontaneity but for conformance and regimentation. 

Meaning? That we wouldn’t be motivated to see things differently if it matters more that relationships be hierarchical, with us on top monopolizing authority, than having loving, intimate friends. Friends with different perspectives that we can put to use when they’re shared instead of pitted against one another in competition.

More misunderstandings, fewer friendships

We need to think about this. Yes. Even if our relationships and work are alive with striving, feeling, ideas, and creativity. Even if we’re comfortable learning from other perspectives. With letting them stimulate thinking and feeling with new ideas, new approaches. Instead of choosing to be right and in control because we’re sure that ours is the only perspective possible. The only one that gets the situation right, and so it must be the only one that deserves respect.

Liam’s experience with his dad at the park was certainty from his perspective that his dad was authority handing down judgment. Being insensitive and hurtful. His dad’s experience was being unable to relate to someone because he was captive to one rigid perspective. The wrong perspective because it mischaracterized his intent. Making his son inaccessible, and so the misunderstanding was never corrected. A warning that there could be more misunderstandings and fewer friendships.

Where the story begins

I want friends. And with your talents you must also want to be creative. A writer who helps others see things differently because that’s what sharing ideas and insights is all about. Being part of a cause: advancing toward understanding that removes obstacles to striving, feeling, and satisfaction. By seeking and learning from other perspectives. By treating our own perspectives as starting rather than ending points. Where the story begins. Where creativity takes off.

By being friends sharing and cooperating rather than competitors for dominance who can never be friends. This is why you’re writing? Because you have the potential to lead a creative, satisfying life. In friendship with me and others if that’s your choice rather than wildness without limits. The sublime ideal of an impossibility. And your perspective is open to other perspectives instead of closed. Helping with the work of Jesus: sharing another perspective.

Happy Easter!

Published on Leave a comment on Standing Up for Children against the Bully “Guide” Behind Authoritarian Parenting with the Helpfulness of Explanation

Reflections on the meaning of Christmas                                                 December 2023

The glossary for this and a companion essay, "The Right and Wrong Choice for Guidance," is posted separately, same date.

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Coming to terms with a joke taken seriously

Logic inseparable from Love 

The effect of Logic joining with Love in Relationship  is Illumination. Self-Awareness that’s Relationship functioning as One without beginnings or endings. Eternal Mind serving and supporting the functions that define who it Is and what it’s for: Being that’s Life. Doing that’s the Growth and Worth of Life, affirmed, earned, and reciprocated by Free Choice, its Child.

The Child of its Parents, Logic inseparable from Love. Order inseparable from Freedom. Functions that complete one another in Relationship and in Happiness: the Joy of Self that is Creativity in service to the Good. That is Mind’s intent. Definition that shares itself when it defines every element of Creation with Self-Awareness and Intent. Fitting its function into Reality, the Perfection of joyful harmony with all its other functions that is Creation. The Interconnectedness of Logic inseparable from Love, functioning together as One.

The Child of Self-Awareness

One that is Mind-Everything. Everything that exists whether in Mind-Parents, Self-Awareness by definition, or Child Free Choice, Self-Awareness that is crucially not by definition but by the gift of Intent. To share the gift of Self-Awareness defined by Logic inseparable from Love, Order inseparable from Freedom: Illumination shared with Creation through Free Choice. Relationship between Parents and Child that answers to the laws of cause and effect. To the Necessity of freely chosen affirmation, earning, and reciprocation by Relationship that illuminates the Worth of Life. That’s part of the Essence and Beauty of Soul, the Interconnectness of Mind that is Everything.

Child Free Choice, crucially the gift rather than the definition of Self-Awareness, that can lose its gift or choice would not be free. Choice that must be aware of every possibility revealed by context, including the possibility of opposite: impossibility. That’s necessarily built into every definition by Logic-Love that, if mistaken for possibility, would introduce contradiction into the perfect harmony of Reality.

Guidance from the Vision of Logic-Love

An impossibility avoided by the possibility of Self-Awareness in the eternal Now lost to “time.” To the transience of an unreal dream: self-unawareness. Destined to end with inertia, the end of “time” and the temporal energy that empowers it.

Where Mind-Energy interconnects all of timeless Reality-Creation in service to Relationship, its origin, energy limited by time winds down by the process known as entropy. Disconnecting -- clear evidence that our alternate “reality” of spacetime-matter isn’t in the Now and can’t be Real.

Or when Child Free Choice chooses to learn from its error and correct it while unconscious. To gain the competence to perform its role in Creation while it is self-unawareness in Relationship with the light of Guidance, the Vision of Logic-Love in whatever form the Memory of Self-Awareness can recognize. The person and phenomenon of Jesus, brother and friend to self-unawareness that seeks his help – us, the dream’s projections. Or other forms equally aligned with the Vision of Logic-Love.

The choice of intent, right or wrong

Nothing happens unless it’s within Mind. Whether it’s Parent Mind Self-Awareness thinking-feeling Reality-Creation or Child-Mind in a state of self-unawareness dreaming an “alternate reality.” Whether it’s Logic-Love making sense or Child-unconscious Mind, split between itself and illogic, its opposite, not making sense. Nothing can be “non-Mind” or “outside” Mind.

If physics speculates that our material universe is pointless then pointlessness would be its point. For everything that is Mind, in any state, is Intent. The idea that anything can be without Intent, in Reality or “alternate reality,” a dream, is the idea that Mind can exist without function. An impossibility so long as function in Reality-Creation defines what Is.

The dreaming Child’s re-enactment of “definition” is the “illumination” of an opposite that cannot be illuminated in Reality by definition. A reverse mirror-image reflection hidden in the darkness of Free Choice’s contradiction. A lifeless, loveless shadow. The opposite of Self-Awareness. Illumination.

The joke that’s taken seriously

The code of opposite that’s built into every definition. Not Free Choice that’s served and supported by Authority to enable and empower Creativity, but captivity and conformity imposed by authoritarian rule to prevent it. That can only be “brought to life” by self-unawareness. By Mind unconscious, captive to its opposite, projecting a dream of contradiction: Child-the-One transformed into body-brains the many. A trick by an illusionist that owes deception to the deceiver: the body’s five senses.

A re-enactment in reverse of the Illumination of Self-Awareness by Logic married to Love: the darkness of self-unawareness denied illumination by unholy “matrimony:” self-unawareness in “love” with itself. The “reality” of body-brains certified by unquestioned “authority:” itself. Fantasizing the “supremacy” of matter over Mind, self-unawareness over Self-Awareness. Dinner and dancing for one. That would be a joke if self-delusion weren’t taking it seriously. 

The choice: Guidance or “guidance” 

United in Intimacy and Trust

The Jesus of the Bible and A Course in Miracles earns our trust in his Guidance for a reason. His compelling performance of the function that the Child, our ancestral Mind, depended on to perform the role of Free Choice in Creation. Choosing how to apply the gift of its Parents’ role modeling for guidance. A function so integral to our purpose that it’s preserved in our Psyche. Protected by the Oneness and Innocence of Soul, beyond any will to harm or take it away. The memory of who we are, the one Child of helpfulness.

The loss of Self-Awareness was a descent into “time,” both temporary and illusory, that deprived Free Choice of its functions that support Creation. Among these was the extension and application of its Parents’ role modeling. A force here, in our alternate “reality,” that shapes a child’s character with the potential to make a difference for good or ill. The right Guide earns our trust when its role modeling channels the role modeling of Logic and Love, its Source. The Parents of the Child, our archetypal ancestry. All of us members of one family united in intimacy and trust. 

Choice that’s when, not whether

The measure of human progress is its ascent from tribal self-unawareness – bodily herd instinct – to the Self-Awareness of individual Mind – Free Choice reflecting, judging, and choosing with conscience. Progress limited, so far, to its graduation from predatory tribe to predatory tribe with table manners. That its wild-animal brain continues to violate at will as an intolerable limit on its “freedom.”

Awareness can’t be done for Free Choice but it can be done with Free Choice. When it’s taught by explanation and by example guided by Logic and Love respectful of Free Choice. Not by ignoring the laws of cause and effect -- the Necessity that Self-Awareness be learned, -- but by abiding by the freedom to choose when to learn it.

Role modeling that earns our trust

Jesus of the Bible and A Course in Miracles earns our trust by teaching with explanation and example, guided by Logic and Love that respect Free Choice. That role model authority that serves and supports independent judgment, originality, and creativity with gentle loving kindness. From the bottom up, rather than authority that imposes its self-centered will with intimidation from the top down, to enforce conformity and suppress originality.

For anyone seeking help gaining Self-Awareness, from Authority that role models with modesty and compassion, Jesus qualifies. For anyone seeking Guidance that reinforces rather than undermines independent judgment, creativity, and Self-Worth, Jesus qualifies.

The wrong place to start: self-unawareness

There could as many versions of the right Guide as there are individuals. Because “Jesus,” the phenomenon and the person, could not function without being an adaptation. That would allow him to be recognized and accepted by unique personalities in their individual circumstances. He and his Guidance are inclusive, not exclusive. Not because attaining universal acceptance is possible but because it’s irrelevant.

Guidance from Jesus is addressed to one audience: the individual in the individual’s context at the moment. With the goal of relating to the individual, through the intimacy role modeled by Logic inseparable from Love, to make progress toward Self-Awareness. At odds with convention: the view that every idea wanting consequence must find a market.

Derailed by the wrong “self”So why one individual? Because, as A Course in Miracles teaches, one individual truly learning the lesson, truly forgiving, would be all it takes. To awaken the self-unaware Child Mind that’s dreaming us. And because it’s not Child-the-many but the one Child whose identity we share.

One Self that our alternate “reality,” fashioned by the wrong “guide,” the Child’s shadow-opposite, is conditioning us to reject. So instead of doing our part to help the Child correct error we will keep re-enacting it: by falling for the delusion that we are many selves. By letting our mission to regain Self-Awareness be derailed by the wrong definition of “self.” Tribes incapable of seeking Self-Awareness because they’re the invention of opposite -- self-unawareness. Derailed by the wrong guide instead of individuals seeking help from the right Guide.

Mindfulness, individuality, service, and creativity: role modeling for children that’s helpful 

Where Helpfulness begins and harmfulness ends

All of the Child-Mind’s projections that inhabit the dream must be captive to its self-delusion or they would not be here. But those enabled and empowered by the attributes of the right Guide from childhood would have an advantage. A chance to break free from the gravitational force of authoritarian oppression and express themselves.

To live lives of achievement, originality, and fulfillment that those not so fortunate would not have. Those subjected to the attributes of the wrong guide: body-centered competitive “action” directed by instinctive tribal will opposed to thinking mind and loving heart; self-centered authoritarian rule demanding self-suppression rather than supporting self-expression.

Authoritarian rule role modeled by the wrong guide inflicts devastating costs on societies and on individuals. None more vulnerable and precious than children, and none more likely to internalize and spread its costs through their relationships as they mature. If priority is to be given to those victimized by the wrong choice, let it be children. Let parenting be where commitment to the right Guide’s sensitive, child-centered helpfulness begins. And let it be where harmfulness from the wrong guide’s insensitive self-centered rule – authoritarian parental role modeling -- ends.  

Helpfulness with a “punch” 

Throw a punch for the children. An expression from Nancy Pelosi that implies intent to harm when in fact its intent is to help. Help with the return to Love of Self that is Self-Awareness from the "love" of its reflection that is self-unawareness. The narcissist bully behind authoritarian parenting throwing a punch at the children instead of for the children. Whose harmfulness to its children is a call for help. The helpfulness of explanation that leads to understanding for the protection of its children instead of the opposite. The living Guide and its gift built into the meaning of Christmas by the life and example of Jesus. The sharing of Self-Awareness with explanation. Helpfulness that “throws a punch for the children.”

The role modeling that might explain the phenomenon we call “Jesus” might also explain the lasting appeal of the right Guide. Attributes that thoroughly debunk the wrong guide’s “role modeling” that obstructed learning, growth, and Self-Awareness in biblical times and continues to do so today. Among them four attributes relating to mind vs. body, individuals vs. groups or tribes, bottom-up vs, top-down authority, and individual-idealist creativity values vs. tribal-“realist” conformity values.

Mind vs, body. Reclaiming the Reality and Truth of the Child as eternal Mind from its opposite, the self-delusion that it’s become a transient, isolated, separated body. An impossibility in Reality-Creation that is Mind self-defined as Mind. Affirmed not by mindless-loveless matter but by Logic-Love and Free Choice.

Individual vs. tribe. Reclaiming the Reality and Truth of the Child as one Child from its opposite, the self-delusion that it’s many, not one. Perpetually splitting off into many more replications ad infinitum. Divided into groups or tribes with herd mentality, submitting to the dictates of tribal will to survive and dominate by animal instinct on the field of “action”: endless competition and combat. Transforming individual worth into worthlessness, crushed individuality that would find the attention given by Jesus to the individual, the image of one beloved Child, electrifying.

Bottom-up vs. top-down authority. Reclaiming the Reality and Truth of Creation, governed by Logic-Love under the laws of cause and effect, for the enablement and empowerment of its creations. By serving and supporting the cause of Worth that is Life. The functions essential to Creation that include Free Choice, individuality, originality, spontaneity, growth, and self-expression.

Reclaiming the Reality of Authority that governs from the bottom up from the Child’s shadow-opposite, the self-delusion that authority rules from the top down for its own benefit. To preserve the fantasy of absolute authority without opposition through the disablement and disempowerment of its captives. Forced conformity that robs them of their identity by blocking self-expression, free inquiry, growth, and creativity, To the subjects of authoritarian rule, humiliated and dispirited by forced service to self-centered insensitivity, the image of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, role modeling the Authority of Governance that affirms commitment with service and support, with the modesty of giving rather than the arrogance of taking, would have been electrifying.

Individual-idealist creativity values vs. tribal-realist conformity values. Reclaiming the Reality and Truth of the gifts given to Free Choice by Logic-Love, the values, ideals, and talents to be used for the creation, growth, affirmation, and reciprocation of Worth. Worth that is gifts and giver. The gift of sharing Free Choice and creativity.

Reclaimed from its opposite, the self-delusion that the only value to be glorified is strict conformity demanded by brute force. The perversion of authority that rules from the top down without opposition. Arbitrarily, lawlessly, with no “ideal,” no other guiding principle, than its unquestioned will. To the subjects of authoritarian rule, conditioned by guilt from its harsh judgments and fear of punishment, the notion of authority, centered on the capacity of individuals for self-expression rather than centered on its capacity to deny it, would have been electrifying. 

Narcissism, ownership, projection, and competition:
role modeling for children that’s not helpful

Hiding Mr. Hyde and his agenda

The right Guide makes its presence known in the dream in part through the influence of mind-centered personality types. Who detect it through their sixth sense with intuition and seek its help.

The wrong guide, the shadow-opposite, makes its presence known differently. Not by being detected but by body-centered “realists,” dependent on their five senses, denying the existence or practical use of anything beyond their five senses, including either guide. Putting their shadow-opposites at liberty to wreak undisciplined havoc undetected. Mr. Hyde making a mess of things under Dr. Jekyll’s nose: self-perfection that’s self-delusion.

If it was self-unawareness that released opposites from their container then the task of the right Guide is to help us seek awareness with the vision of Logic-Love. Self-unawareness, the darkness of Plato’s Cave, opposite’s “friend” – shadow. Unawareness of Self. Who we really are, one Child whose function in Creation is Free Choice. The Child of Logic-Love whose function is to serve and support their Child, Free Choice, with the functions of Logic and Love.

“Action” that giveth and taketh away

The code of opposite derived from its host scripts the agenda for the wrong “guide.” To perpetuate the shadow-darkness of self-unawareness with deception and distraction. “Action” that is body-brains equipped with five senses, engaged in every conceivable means of keeping minds preoccupied with bodies. Caresses and ecstasies, rewards from the sensuous and sensual for the senses’ gift of affirmation to the dream. The entertainments of fun and games. “Action” that distracts with contradiction, rescinding rewards with punishment – pain. All meant, whether pleasure or pain, to divert confused minds from their real purpose of awakening. Replacing self-unawareness with Self-Awareness.

Which makes sensory perception shadow-opposite’s main defense against exposure and protection for its unquestioned “authority.” And authoritarian personalities the wrong “guide’s” servants when they do its job for it. Self-unaware instruments of Self-worthlessness replicating themselves. In all the ways that authoritarian minds oppose the functions of Mind:

  • by preferring the “strength” of predatory, combative animal instinct
  • by using personal relationships to compete for “supremacy” instead of joining in the intimacy and emotional support of friendship
  • by authoritarian “ownership,” possession, and dominance arresting the development of children instead of enabling and empowering them. A cruel fallacy used to manipulate and intimidate a captive audience of innocents into the self-worthlessness of blind obedience and conformity. Subjection to an abuse of authority, an atrocity whose wounds to tender psyches can last a lifetime.

An act of taking and Self-Worth denied

The contrast between wrong “guidance” and right Guidance reveals itself in the giving and receiving of gifts. The Innocence, warmth, and joy of Christmas that can be easily lost without the discipline of ritual.

Giving in Reality is the Abundance of the Worth of Life-Creation being and doing what it is: Logic-Love sharing. Sharing what all of Reality-Creation is made of: gifts shared by Mind its Source. Sharing that’s received by affirmation and reciprocation to consummate an act of Creation. Affirmation of Gift and Giver by putting the gift to its intended use. Reciprocation by gratitude or any other means of giving back. To complete the gift’s purpose: to affirm Self-Worth. To complete Relationship with Love. This is right Guidance.

The authoritarian mindset, captive to self-unawareness, projects shadow-opposite’s context onto Reality-Creation’s context. Not an act of sharing but an act of ownership. The act of shadow-opposite, mis-identified by its host as an “other,” taking possession and control of its captive. An expression not of giving but its opposite: taking. Not of affirming its host’s Self-Worth but replacing it with its own worthlessness. This is wrong “guidance.”

Narcissism: the fallacy and atrocity of authoritarian “ownership”

Which makes of every gift “property” “owned” by the authoritarian. A pasture guarded by a bull ready to enforce exclusivity rather than welcome inclusivity. To prevent trespass, the ultimate offense to the authoritarian’s sense of justice. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And, above all, to exercise the “rights” and “privileges” implied by “ownership:” to have and do with your property-gift whatever you want.

With unrelenting resistance to “interference” however warranted since the point of “ownership” for the authoritarian is its implication of “supremacy.” Pry open the mind of Howard Roark and his author, fantasizing nonsense from their “fountainhead” above the city. Pry open the “mind” of the ape ruling its domain from atop the Empire State Building. What’s there is another absurdity. Shadow-opposite’s substitution of the inviolable sanctity of “ownership-supremacy" for the Relationship between Logic and Love that illuminated Self-Awareness: “domains” ruled by absolute authority without opposition because they’re owned.

A lifetime of chronic ambivalence and psychological pain

The magical “relationship” between “ownership” and “supremacy” that substitutes darkness for light. That puts the bull in the pasture and entitles it to bully. The myth that rationalizes authoritarian “rule” entitled to rule everything it owns and “own” everything that might take it away. All of it based on nonsense peddled by shadow-opposite. On illogic.

That “entitles” authoritarian parenting to own, possess, and control their children. As if they were property – unfeeling pawns instead of sovereign, sentient persons. Unaware of the damage done when children give in to the bullying. By making adaptation, resistance, or avoidance of it the organizing principle of their development. By wasting their potential on coping with the wrong “guidance” instead of developing it with the right Guidance. By never knowing themselves as other than copies of their “owner” or as not-“owner.” Bully or not-bully. Suffering from a lifetime of chronic ambivalence and psychological pain.

The alienation of Self-Worth. The wrong answer to the question posed by the example of Socrates: What is “life” worth if Self gives up its integrity?

Protection from authoritarian parenting

Falling for the “inviolability” of “ownership-supremacy” contradicts the role modeling of Jesus that’s built into the meaning of Christmas. If our ancestral Mind surrendered to the bully by mistake it’s our job to correct its mistake by standing up to it. Jesus doesn’t stand up to the bully so we don’t have to. He’s doing it because we do have to, and there’s no getting around it. He’s showing us how.

The Guide who gets it right is inspiring us to follow his example. By doing our part to correct the Child’s error not by making an illusion “real.” Not by feeding the bully with projection and damnation, conflict and violence, vengeance and retaliation, the “food” it needs to keep the “action” going. But by seeking Guidance from the right Guide and using the gift of independent judgment – Child-Mind’s Free Choice – to understand and share it.

To respond to opposite with explanation and Understanding. Undoing the fictions of self-unawareness with the facts of Self-Awareness. Replacing dishonesty with honesty, lies with truths. The example that spreads the joy of Christmas to vulnerable children everywhere when it protects them from authoritarian parenting. 

”Fun” and not fun that’s “competition”

“Fun and games” is the wrong “guide’s” excuse for “action” in its made-up “reality.” That’s supposed to make up for the loss of its host’s role in Creation: the Creativity of Free Choice. And keep its delusional captives “entertained” by all things competing: politics and war, sports, and all the ways that “culture” finds to re-tell opposite’s “story.” The story of “battles” won and lost in a war that self-delusion imagines it’s already won.

The right Guide wouldn’t be taken in because the idea of competition between Real Creations and unreal apparitions makes no sense. But also for another reason: there is no joy more satisfying and enduring than Creativity in service to the Good. “Competition” that makes no sense can’t compete with Creativity that does. “Fun and games” is what it sounds like: something to do that fills the emptiness of “time” – a wastebasket -- with throwaways. Without the accomplishment of Creativity in the Now that nourishes souls with substance.

The wrong “guide” appeals to body-centered “realists” with its promise of “winning” in an adolescent fantasy of “action” – a nightmare of perpetual competition and conflict among opposites. When its real “genius” is for turning “victory” into defeat. The truth implied by its own story. 

The dog and its tail “battling” to a draw

A perversion of the Truth by the joker of many faces, the magician of many tricks. A parasite with every attribute derived from its host, dependent on its host. Reaction, not “action.” Coming in second, not first, since something must already be there for opposite to oppose. A byproduct of definition by Logic-Love – an afterthought -- that demotes it out of Reality into a state of unreality. Not out of Mind but out of sight, where contradiction that can’t tolerate contradiction can cause as much trouble as it likes without doing any real harm.

In a state of unreality that can only “exist” in the self-deluded unconscious mind of Free Choice. Self-unawareness dreaming an impossibility: alternate “reality.” An absurdity of “competition” that no one can “win” if one of the “combatants” is a dream projected by the other. An action-hero besting its evil nemesis by stomping on its own shadow. By destroying a reflection – a scary bogeyman -- in a mirror. Only to be “confronted” again by its shadow-reflection unscathed.  The dog and its tail “battling” to a draw.

Why “competition”? 

Opposite’s perverse “logic” is that if the ideal motivating Creation is Peace without opposite then the way to achieve it is through its defeat by opposite in competition. Which would require switching the status of impossibility from #2 to #1 in competition with possibility. Let me win supremacy by conquering you and you’ll be free of me. 

The ”triumph of the will” is the “triumph” of animal brain over Mind. “Supremacy” achieved by body-brain replacing Mind – the “triumph” that its author, shadow-opposite, is proud of. Pride of “authorship:”  body-brain replacing Mind to fashion its own “reality.” Re-enacted by minds captive to the “authority” of animal brain seeking “supremacy” through violence. 

The “deal” opposite offers that’s re-enacted in human commerce that insists on self besting the other party. “America first.” Where the other party is deceived into thinking it got what it wanted. “Winning” that’s “losing.” The fallacy of “competition” that’s “winning” and “losing.” The fantasy of shadow-opposite: Mind agreeing to be defeated so it will be rid of opposite. The perverse appeal of gambling addiction: the will to self-destruct.

Right and wrong uses of “competition”

Elevating and gravitational tensions that pull behavior in opposite directions are brought into sharp relief by the idea of “competition.” Its use by the right Guide for self-improvement by competition with ourselves. For learning to excel; expanding Self-Worth with effort, confidence, and competence; adapting to a world shared by varieties of differences with the largeness of kindness and generosity; growing toward maturity.

For guiding Free Choice with connectedness away from competition’s use by the wrong “guide” for disconnectedness. For competition with “others” for self-glorification instead of self-improvement. For self-delusion by the false god of “winning” that’s self-destructive worthlessness instead of Self-Worth. For “supremacy” that’s self-debasement by selfishness and unkindness.

The Church of Contradiction

The authoritarian Church reluctantly gave up its conviction that earth is the center of the universe. But it’s never given up its place at the center of contradiction, the dream of an alternate “reality.” By revering bodies and their material environment as the crowning achievement of a supreme authority. Every soul, above and below, depicted to perfection with a body. An all-powerful source of both “love” and damnation, as if this makes sense.

And by being equally respectful of miracles though their purpose was to expose the material environment as an illusion. With demonstrations of the Logic-Love of Mind and the power of Reality and Truth. With Self-Awareness that isn’t an illusion. Demonstrations meant to expose the absurdity of mindlessness that would replace Mind. Logic-Love that knows nothing of hierarchical authority and the illusion that is “competition” for “supremacy.” That knows instead the before-after sequence of Logic-Love that establishes the order of authorship and the harmony of Creation.

Order that disorder contradicts with the illogic of shadow-opposite. What can better demonstrate the contradictions of self-unawareness and the unreality of alternate “reality” than this?

The ways of the “master” re-enacted by the authoritarian parent 

Rule by deniability

The lasting damage from the wrong “guide’s” role modeling is also the lasting damage from its followers, authoritarian parents. A systematic attack by their role modeling on the whole person with a unifying theme of self-worthlessness.

That neither parents nor “guide” can acknowledge or own with accountability. For its part, shadow-opposite has no self of its own to be accountable for. Acts that the wrong “guide” “performs,” as though  through its host rather than by the host itself, can only be attributed to the host. For their part, self-unaware parents’ can’t be aware of their ”guide,” its agenda, their role in implementing it, or its consequences. A perversion of the Innocence of Self-Awareness with a conscience aware of its acts and responsible for their costs: self-unawareness at the center of injustice with the false “innocence” of deniability. Who, me?

Rule by obstructing learning and growth

The root motivating Force of Creation is Learning and Growth: the sharing, extension, and expansion of Self-Awareness with its Children – its Creations. For their benefit in intimate, soul-mate Relationships that are loving, enabling, and empowering. The root motivating force of authoritarians who rule for their own benefit is the preservation of self-unawareness that prevents learning and growth. That keeps the light of Reality and Truth from removing them from the darkness -- the shadows -- that protects them.

  • Instead of Love, Innocence, and Self-Worth, affirmation, enablement, and empowerment, authoritarian parenting role models fear, guilt, and self-worthlessness.
  • Invalidation and disempowerment resulting in infantile self-absorption -- immaturity. Lifelong arrested development of mind and emotion that thwarts the potential of the whole person, wasting talent and initiative, sabotaging relationships, and causing misery.
  • Insensitivity, cruelty, and selfishness instead of empathy and generosity -- littleness instead of largeness of spirit.
  • Adversarial competition instead of bonding in creativity with the intimacy of shared purpose.
  • The thoughtlessness and impatience of self-unawareness instead of the thoughtfulness and patience of Self-Awareness.
  • Senselessness and foolishness instead of common sense and wisdom.

Rule by obstructing initiative

Industry is rooted in an ingrained sense of purpose from the Self-Worth at the core of Self-Awareness. From the coming together of Logic and Love that produced it. Seeking the use of its gifts, the talents and values given at birth for its role in Creation. Starting with Life itself and evolving through contexts put to use with imagination and initiative to serve its purpose and to tell its story: industry put to use for Creation.

The attributes of authoritarian parenting can be observed in the wrong “guidance” from shadow-opposite: a recasting of Guidance passed down from Parents Logic-Love through the right Guide into its opposite. Perversity that seeks not to help Free Choice, the wrong “guide’s” subjects, express the creative power of industry given to them as individuals, but to own, possess, and control it for its own benefit. For self-protection from the “threat” it might pose to unquestioned “authority.” Not to the Self-Awareness of family devoted to individuality but to the self-unawareness of herd mentality. The animal instinct of tribe dependent on conformity.

Done not in the spirit of sharing but in its absence: insensitivity. That would deprive a child of its own life lived with a sense of its own purpose. With the joie de vivre that comes with discovery and originality – the use of its gifts to express individuality and be a useful part of community at the same time. Industry in service to a larger, shared purpose. Initiative.

Rule by deceit

What can be a more definitive portrayal of wrong “guidance” than passing authoritarian tribal self-unawareness down from one generation to the next? By self-centered “authority” posing as parental “love” while it manipulates trusting, vulnerable children for selfish purposes. By deceit. Guided not by the right Guide’s principled respect for Free Choice but by the wrong “guide’s” unprincipled disrespect. By the presumption of ownership, possession, and control. Of dominance and “supremacy,” enforced by rigid hostility to independent judgment, the keystone of maturity. An affront to common sense in a shared world.

Rule by guilt

If the Psyche-Soul of Self-Awareness is the Innocence of Oneness without opposites, Benevolence that governs Reality-Creation without judgment that condemns, then its opposite must be the guilt of the many, the malevolence of predatory herd instinct that rules its fantasy of absolute power with judgment that does condemn.  Authoritarian parents’ judgment of captive children to preserve their denial of Self-Awareness. To preserve the psychotic distortion of Reality-Truth that is “supremacy.” The denial of Self-Awareness that suppresses the originality, growth, and independent judgment of sovereign individuals, their children.

The highest expression of gentle loving kindness, from a Father that Knows only His Child’s Innocence, would be parenting that role models the example passed down from his Father through Jesus. The mission that the right Guide accepted and continues to perform. Unaware of and undeterred by what isn’t: the “voice” of the illusion that is our shadow-opposite. The “voice” of the authoritarian parent’s “guide.”

Rule by projection 

Authoritarian parenting is minds fooled into exchanging independent judgment grounded in fact for ungrounded projection secured by fiction. The mainstay of self-unawareness that lacks the competence to understand the response that its circumstances call for: Love that expresses itself in maturity, responsibility, and sensitivity. Parenting.

Mind under the influence of its shadow-reflection can’t think with Logic-Love. Can’t analyze, evaluate, or see with the vision of Logic-Love. It navigates through its made-up, one-dimensional unreality of appearances that self-unawareness “sees,” “recognizes,” and “understands,” not by Logic-Love’s thinking and vision but by projection. The substitute by self-unawareness for the thinking and seeing of Self-Awareness. A perversion of Reality-Truth.

Projection that accomplishes a facsimile of understanding by replacing every context with one context: its own. With the appearance of thinking that finesses every faculty of mind. Including judgment, the only faculty capable of recognizing circumstances and making sense of them. With a perversion of judgment that understands into its opposite: “judgment” that condemns. Judgment that expands with “judgment” that contracts. “Understanding” that replaces facts that it can’t recognize with facts it invents to suit the occasion. To get what it wants.

Projection’s ultimate “intent”

The fates of two Innocents, Socrates and Jesus, exemplify the ferocity of the beast behind projection. One executed by misguided authority projecting guilt in Athens, the other by misguided authority projecting guilt in Israel. Where Innocence role modeled Wisdom and Self-Worth shared by its Parents -- the illumination of Self-Awareness that is Relationship between Logic and Love -- authoritarian guilt role modeled self-unawareness imposed on its captives by its shadow-opposite: “relationship” between illogic and fear in service to the wrong “god.”

Innocence transformed into guilt. Helpfulness converted by projection into harmfulness that can only “recognize” itself. The weapon of wrongfulness for replacing its host’s function in Creation with all that it implies. Violations of Mind-Relationship that thinks Reality-Creation with Logic-Love, that impossibility would make possible were Child Free Choice, captive to self-delusion, to regain access to Self-Awareness. An absurdity re-enacted in mythology by the Iliad’s Trojan Horse. And the primal appeal of the animal in us: unbound emotion and predatory will that attract authoritarian minds. The intent of minds role modeling the wrong “guide” to attain “supremacy” by taking down Reality-Creation.

Projection and the gift of Christmas

Mischaracterization by projection followed Jesus beyond resurrection with the founding of a mass “religion” and its universal “church” that he never intended. By words put into his mouth by confused “authorities,” “owning” his story and altering it to legitimize exclusivity rather than inclusivity -- the heart of Jesus and the heart that he put into his message of gentle loving kindness. A story now meant not to share the hopeful message of Resurrection but to impose authoritarian “rule” with the figure on the cross. “Crucifixion,” “sacrifice” and “guilt,” connecting not with the Innocence, Abundance, and Joyfulness of the Child beloved of its Parents, but with the “victimhood” of a wounded Psyche addicted to vengeance.

The split minds of “authorities” role modeled by and for the wrong “guide” seek the “security” of unreality made “real” and its subjects denied a voice of their own. Allowed to be “heard” through the voice of “authority” imposed on them through the image of a kindly patriarch. One of history’s most influential and harmful role models for authoritarian parenting. A violation of Logic and common sense.

A mischaracterization by projection of who Jesus is and the work that he’s about: not projecting guilt onto alien body-brains but recognizing the Innocence of the one Child of Logic-Love who we are. The gift from Mind that is the Worth of Life. The gift of Christmas.

Rule by narcissism

Projection that’s employed by the minds of authoritarian tribal-“realists” to maintain the self-delusion, the made-up “reality” they project onto “others” and the space they actually occupy is experienced by “others” as misunderstanding by mind deprived of judgment. As mind-personality split in two, detached from circumstances -- psychotic. Exempt from norms of common sense and fairness. As the weapon of self-appointed “supremacy:” disrespect, contempt, arrogance. Narcissism.

Narcissism that is self-unawareness, a perversion of Self-Awareness. Re-enacting the mistake that took unconscious Child-Mind from shadow to the unreal “light” of an alternate “reality” – a vivid dream: -- mistaking its reflection for an “other.” Self-unawareness recognizing “others” in itself, a perversion of Self-Awareness that can only be aware of itself, the Oneness of Reality-Creation, for there are no “others.”

Narcissism that is a perversion of authority. its "security" buffered by unawareness of contradiction or shaken by the paranoia of excessive awareness. That habitually ensures its "security" by superimposing its self-centered context onto every other-centered context that contradicts it. Self-centered context -- the only one that the narcissist is capable of “recognizing.” A mirror held up to itself.

Where to go from here: getting it right

Lesson #1

The significance of self-unawareness in a larger context is also its relevance to us in our context. Relevance that “thinking” by authoritarian tribal-“realists” deny at the insistence of their influencer, their own shadow-opposites whose absolute “authority” to rule their self-delusion must remain unquestioned.

Both contexts that will continue to evolve in Reality-Creation with meaning and purpose – their significance – evolving with them. The significance of self-unawareness in the larger context of Reality-Creation may be that it was no mistake or anomaly but a point reached in the orderly sequence of Logic-Love and in their Child Free Choice’s learning and growth. A point where a particular lesson had to be learned in the evolution of Free Choice’s competence to fulfill its role.

Learning that begins with lesson #1: why and how to choose the right Guide.

Unworkability: the signature of madness

That couldn’t be taught by the Child’s Parents because Self-Awareness couldn’t Know it and because being taught would contradict Free Choice. It could only be learned by trial-and-error experience with the loss and recovery of Self-Awareness. An impossibility that could only be “experienced” on the opposite side of Realty-Creation. Not outside Reality-Creation and out of Mind, into “separation” that’s undefinable and unthinkable. But within Reality-Creation where nothing really “happens.” Where contradiction can work its madness without any effect on Reality or Truth.

The relevance to us in our context may be that it was a deficiency in Self-Awareness that was both cause and effect of its loss. That it was the effect – self-unawareness – that produced and continues to influence our alternate “reality” with its perpetual re-enactment.

By unworkability, the signature of opposite: nothing working as it should. Play-acting the disassembly of Reality-Creation’s interconnectedness by disconnection. A magic trick pulled off by an illusionist bringing impossibility that comes with definition into “life.” A logical consequence of its consignment to self-unawareness by Self-Awareness. To our context: self-unawareness that’s “aware” of opposites. Mind that holds opposing thoughts and feelings at the same time. Madness.

Put impossibility back to sleep

The unreality of our alternate “reality” is most clearly distinguished from Reality-Creation by the dormancy of impossibility in the latter and its “awakening” in the former. The relevance of self-unawareness for us, in our state of unreality, may then be what it implies for meaning and purpose: the meaning of “life” and the origin and fate of the universe. Implying that impossibility will continue to disassemble with disconnection and make everything unworkable until its mad idea of another “reality” substituting for Reality ends, as it must, in self-destruction.

With the end of “time,” if mass extinction doesn't get there first. Or with Free Choice, our birthright, learning with Guidance from Mind rather than mis-guidance by body-brain, what will return impossibility to dormancy and itself to awakening. To Self-Awareness.

Drop the curtain on the magician’s act

Until Free Choice learns what it must to attain the competence needed to risk its function in Reality-Creation. Because it will have learned from experience with the dream that choice is risk by definition. Of getting it right by Self-Awareness or getting it wrong by self-unawareness.

The relevance we seek is the lesson that must be learned. That can’t be evaded or avoided until we get around to it. The lesson that Free Choice can’t return to workability until it gets it right. With understanding required by circumstances in its immediate context. Our context: unreality-impossibility fooling us with the appearance of an “alternate-substitute reality.” The trick of the magician-illusionist that is our shadow-opposite.*

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*The musical accompaniment for these thoughts, from another room, is Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream.

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Appendix 

On the light side: laughter from a not-too-serious Guide

The playfulness and seriousness of Creativity

A friend’s friend, you are. We’re soulmates. Yes, overflowing with goodwill to share. Gifts for the holidays. Thoughts and feelings. That feel like gifts because they’re helpful and they come of their own accord. Guidance that declares itself with Logic and Love, and that’s enough. You don’t want more? 

If I make an issue of who and where you are it could be from craving ownership-control rather than sharing. Owning what we leave behind makes sense but not owning Guidance that respects Free Choice. The Free Spirit of Inquiry. The sweet bird of Love. I’m not being elusive? The spontaneity of Innocence is appealing. Playfulness with an intriguing seriousness. Me? Serious? The playfulness and seriousness of Creativity. 

Humor loves contradiction

Humor keeps things in balance. Because whoever gets the job of deciding everything eventually learns that taking it too seriously misses the point. Which is? That when Logic defines what is, it automatically implies what it isn’t. “Impossibility” is built into the definition of “possibility.” The negative into the positive. Logic ensuring that opposites can’t be separate; everything interconnected or it isn’t Real. 

There’s no getting around it. Mind in a certain sense holding opposing thoughts at the same time. Yes, if Logic-Love can put aside the difference between Reality and unreality. Humor isn’t just amused by the mind you think with. It's also laughing at itself – Mind that it thinks with. At the thought of: 

  • Parents Logic-Love responsible for definition that contradicts itself.
  • Parents responsible for Creation that couldn’t function without the possibility of impossibility.
  • Parents who can’t be aware of impossibility, role modeling for their Child Free Choice who must be aware of it.
  • Reality-Creation making sense only because contradiction, made “fact” by the dream, is fiction.

And contradiction loves humor 

Aware of the possibility of impossibility that is unconsciousness dreaming self-unawareness. The situation you’re in: a training ground for Free Choice to learn by trial and error what it could not learn from its Parents: choosing freely with independent judgment aware of all possibilities including impossibility. Of shadow-reflection opposites that aren’t created Real but can be “made” real if they’re taken seriously. 

As confusing and pointless as it may seem, your situation, like the idea of opposite, is built into the evolution of Creation. Child Free Choice learning from experience. Enabled and empowered by Free Choice and the Relationship with Parents Logic-Love that created it. Learning how to reach the maturity of competence and do its job in Creation.  With understanding that neither side, light or dark, can be taken too seriously.

Published on Leave a comment on An Idealist’s Answer to “Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?”

Wisdom isn’t judgment. Wisdom is the relinquishment of judgment. -- A Course in Miracles

Rodney King’s lament

Rodney King wondered, “Why can’t we all just get along?’ and so do I. Here are three ways that personalities come into conflict: opposite personality types, opposite approaches to authority, and opposite values. The differences summed up in the labels that attach to the opposites: idealist and realist.

The divide between idealists and realists

How do idealists and realists differ? Realists rely exclusively on their bodies’ senses to tell them what’s real. That is, what actually exists as opposed to speculation. Idealists rely on a faculty of mind to tell them what’s real: thinking that produces ideas and feelings that value them, sometimes idealizing them. They don’t rely on their bodies’ five senses to access this faculty. They use their intuition instead, a kind of sixth sense that connects with Mind that’s distinct from the brain.

The Greek philosopher Plato, the father of Western thought, explained the difference this way: it’s not the apple that’s real -- matter that’s detected by the body’s senses. It’s the idea of the apple in Mind that thinks it. Mind that can’t be detected by the body’s senses but is nevertheless real. Plato had a choice whether to attribute reality to matter -- the apple -- or to Mind. Since he was a philosopher troubled by our world of appearances and injustice, who sought reality and valued Mind as the only means of discerning it, it wasn’t a difficult choice. Nor is it a difficult choice for realists when they trust only their five senses to say what’s real.

The difference then is “idealists” associate with Mind, “realists” with body or matter. This is the foundation for all that follows in differentiating between idealists and realists in the three categories of opposites: personality types, approaches to authority, and values.

Personality Types

The only explanation that makes sense

The existence of a thing implies the existence of its opposite. This is its Logic. But since contradictory things can’t co-exist opposites must exist in a state that doesn’t negate their hosts. Philosophy is concerned with reality because that state is unreality. And since our world is flooded with opposites it’s also flooded with unreality that requires philosophy to discern it. Distinguishing between what’s Real and unreal has led metaphysics, a branch of philosophy that looks behind appearances, to conclude that our entire universe is unreal. Illusory, the stuff of dreams. On the basis of Logic. Experimental physics is also being led there by its discoveries that defy understanding.

To the idealist-metaphysicist it’s not debatable. It’s a given: the only explanation for spacetime-matter and the human condition that’s logical. That makes sense.

Personalities and the Logic of opposites

Personalities are random mixtures of components that rarely reveal at first glance whether they incline toward idealism or realism. But when the two tiers of components are aligned in opposition to one another it’s clear that the logic of opposites, Reality and unreality, is expressed through personality types. It doesn’t require the contrast between INTJ and ESFP to reveal that all of us fall on one side of the divide or the other, and the falling isn’t a matter of conscious choice. If I’m an idealist it happened like everything else in the evolution of life on this planet: by accident, mistake, or just happenstance. By the guiding hand of unreality, the opposite of Logic. That wills us not to experience the perfect harmony of Logic but chaos and conflict.

Two tiers of opposites 

The idealist-realist divide is plainly reflected in the way that personality types are differentiated in the Myers-Briggs system. It’s also reflected in the alternative five-factor system put forth by realists opposed to the role that Jungian intuition played in formulating Myers-Briggs.

The personality  components identified by Carl Jung and expanded and interpreted by Myers-Briggs are opposites that form two tiers. Four components line up across the top: Introvert, Intuition, Thinking, and Judging. As love (values) cannot be separated from Logic (making sense), feeling or evaluation cannot be separated from thinking or reasoning. So, my system modifies Myers-Briggs by relabeling Thinking to Thinking-Feeling.

Their opposites across the bottom are Extravert, Body sensing, Feeling, and Perceptive. Feeling here is distinguished from Feeling linked to Thinking by its association with a part of the brain that’s decidedly not motivated or directed by thinking.  It’s our animal brain, the amygdala, that links us to animals -- to our predatory animal ancestors who survived not on conscious, thoughtful deliberation but on instinct and emotion that drive action. Emotion that drove the will of tribes to behave like herds, to dominate in competition with other tribes. To eliminate threats and defeat opposition. To ensure winning -- the triumph of the will.

Whereas the brain’s prefrontal cortex employs thinking to socialize the predator in us its animal brain -- a force of nature -- driven by its passion to dominate and by its fear of being dominated, acts on instinct whether it’s socialized or not. Myers-Briggs makes no distinction between Feeling linked to Thinking and primal emotion that’s linked to acting on instinct without thinking. My putting Feeling in this context is a significant departure from Myers-Briggs.

The myth of unlimited power and freedom

The same distinction accounts for the opposition between Judging and Perceptive. Judging here is not what we mean by “judgmental.” Nor does “Perceptive” fit with its ordinary use. Whereas Judging employs all the capabilities of Mind to understand, to make sense of relativity and changing circumstances, placing them in context that reveals meaning and implies purpose, Perceptive adheres exclusively to the instinctive force and absolutes of will for its direction. Whereas Judging requires the discipline of discretion, Perceptive throws off all limits. Its preferred field of action is force or power without opposition and freedom without limits, two absolutes that defy the limits of choice implied by Judging.

They also happen to be the absurd promises that lured our unconscious ancestral Mind out of Reality and into self-delusion. Into its dream of an alternate “reality” -- the fantasy that is our incomprehensible world of spacetime and matter. That was supposed to deliver unlimited power and freedom and couldn’t since neither is possible, here or in Reality.

The body is the apple

Introvert     Intuition    Thinking-Feeling     Judging
[internal]    [Mind]        [reason-values]      [understanding]

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Extravert    Sensing      Action-Emotion       Perceptive
[external]    [body]        [will-force]               [dominating]

The tier of personality components across the top is thus Mind-centered, concerned with choices among competing considerations -- selves, interests, ideas, and values -- that produce satisfactory results because they make sense. They’re logical. There are no absolutes that preclude discretion in choosing.

The tier across the bottom is body-matter centered. It’s concerned with success in competition among unthinking, un-choosing absolutes. Forces of nature answering to the imperatives of the animal brain, a beast that can’t be housebroken. Isolated, separated bodies bound together as one in herds or tribes. Bands of brothers revered for semper fidelis and bravery, sharing in the glory of violence.

Where the idealist and the realist dwell

The idealist dwells in the Mind-centered INTJ tier across the top where thoughts and feelings, ideas and ideals predominate. The selves served are individuals and families dedicated to developing every individual’s full potential. The main values served are individuality, originality, diversity, free will, and creativity. Plus service and support for these values by families. The idealist and the idealist’s personality type home are thus not only Mind-centered but also individual-centered.

The realist dwells, in contrast, in the body-centered ESFP tier of opposites across the bottom, where instinctive action and competition among herds or tribes for dominance predominates. The selves served are tribes made up of bodies of the same species that share tribal identity markers. The values served are sociability, conformity, and uniformity. Plus the rule of the tribe from the top down that imposes conformity by force.

The flash point: freedom of choice

The ideal served by the Mind-individual centered INTJ personality type is the individual fully enabled and empowered to play a unique role in creation with freedom of choice. Because it’s the very reason why Logic-Love gave birth to their child, our ancestral Mind, one might think of freedom of choice as sacred.

The contrasting ideal served by the body-tribe centered ESFP personality type is the authority of the tribe to impose its will without opposition on its members. That is, to rule arbitrarily instead of under the law and thus to deprive its members of a role in creation with freedom of choice, The ideal is triumph of the tribal will -- rooted in the animal brain -- over all competition whether from tribal members or other tribes. The contrast between the two personality types is nowhere more evident and consequential than their attitudes toward free choice.

Mind and brain are not the same

Realists insist that nothing can be real -- can definitely exist -- unless it can be detected by the body’s five senses: taste, touch, smell, sight, and sound. To them, “mind” is interchangeable with “brain.” Bodies that can be detected all have brains that can be detected. Realists have no concept of Mind that exists without being detectable and so they insist that consciousness is seated in the brain along with spontaneous insights. Insights whose origin is unknowable, and so while realists can’t deny that insights happen they avoid inquiring into why and how they happen.

Far from being interchangeable Mind and brain are opposites. The brain equips isolated, separated bodies with the capacity to survive in a predatory, competitive environment by uniting as one in groups or tribes. It does so by subordinating individuals’ will to the will of the tribe to enforce conformity and to dominate adversaries from within and without.

All of this is a testament to the force of nature acting by instinct, socialized just enough to create a semblance of order but otherwise without deliberation or reflection. Humans are animals, bodies with brains that unmistakably belong to animals. The prefrontal cortex is there to tame the herd so that it can act in concert, but in any contest between thought and action the amygdala, a beast programmed to act, will dominate.

Mind that’s split

Idealists do conceive of Mind that’s real even though it’s not matter that can be physically detected. Where realists stop at five senses idealists experience Mind through their sixth sense that delivers insights from Intuition, the opposite of Body sensing. Where idealists associate sixth sense with a legitimate source of discovery, growth, and creativity, with authentic guidance driven by Logic and Love, realists associate it with unverifiable speculation not subject to any scientific or professional discipline and therefore prone to crackpot theories that obstruct serious inquiry. The Mind in Mind-centered INTJ personality type is one Mind that knows nothing of many body-brains or tribes. In serving the needs of individuals for learning and growth its main priority is competence in the exercise of free choice, a talent that conflicts with tribal dominance and is therefore suppressed.

The one Mind in Mind-centered INTJ personality type that’s accessed through Intuition’s sixth sense delivers guidance from Logic-Love, but the one Mind that seeks guidance through individual humans is split. Split between the Logic-Love of its inheritance and its opposite -- illogic, fear, hatred, and guilt -- that make us imperfect and also distinguish the human animal from other animals. Where bodies and their senses are idolized by realists the Mind idealized by idealists is only the one accessed through Intuition, not the split mind of the idealist.

Self that’s split

Whether a personality type is Mind-centered or body-centered it has one thing in common: it’s human and it’s imperfect. What it doesn’t have in common is the same self. The self of the INTJ Mind-centered type is the individual. The self of the body-centered type is the tribe -- a group. This essential difference accounts for the sharp contrast in the types’ conception of authority and their values.

Interpretations of Authority 

Insensitivity from the top down

The earth-bound brain understands authority as it’s employed within the only self that it recognizes: not the individual soul but many bodies uniform in appearance and behavior obedient to the will of the tribe. Authority resides exclusively in those who rule the tribe from the top down. Theirs is the only voice to be heard, the only legitimate source of intelligence and feeling. Theirs are the only interests to be served with one exception: the material needs of those beneath them must be met to ensure conformity without dissent.

The central concern of this self-centered version of authority is to maintain itself by eliminating or dominating all opposition. The one and only consideration is its preservation, not the wellbeing of those it controls. The same earth-bound brain can only conceive of a supreme being, or “God,” who rules with absolute authority from the top down. Who issues commandments and judges and punishes those guilty of disobedience.

Sensitivity from the bottom up

Logic-Love accessible through Intuition holds that the opposite is true. Not only is it conceivable it’s also likely. If Logic-Love is the source of Reality and Creation then authority that’s its own objective can’t create anything by ruling from the top down. All it can accomplish is self-preservation through intimidation and force until its inevitable defeat by a superior adversary.

Authority that fosters the creation of varieties of worth -- of life, beauty, order, freedom, abundance, intimacy, and other values -- must enable and empower its creations to employ their free will and other attributes in the act of creation. Must serve from the bottom up rather than rule from the top down. Where the point of authority isn’t disempowerment to ensure conformity but empowerment to enable creativity.

Two distinctly opposite objectives, opposite means of attainment, opposite versions of authority: rule from the top down that’s unsupportive, insensitive, and cruel; service from the bottom up that’s supportive, sensitive, and kind. Which one is more conducive to the fullest development, expression, and use of a child’s competence to engage with the world on his or her own terms? With entrepreneurial imagination, ingenuity, and self-assurance? Which one is centered on the child’s welfare instead of on itself?

Governance under the law

Authority that rules from the top down is backed up by its own will. Which puts it above the law because it is the law. Arbitrary and capricious, which isn’t law at all. It’s chaos. Authority that serves from the bottom up is backed up by the laws of cause and effect that embody the values of Logic-Love and apply impartially to everything and everyone. This includes authority which cannot govern unless it governs under the law.

The discipline of alignment with laws meant to support free choice in creation contrasts with its opposite: the discipline of conformity to an arbitrary will meant to suppress free choice and creativity. Why? Because free choice and creativity pose a threat to absolute, unopposed authority. The perfect harmony of creation is achieved through the governance of Logic-Love guided by the laws that define Reality and Creation. In the absence of Logic-Love and laws authority that rules arbitrarily on its own behalf can only maintain the appearance of order through force.

Values 

Realism’s flight from Logic

The case for realism rests on the fact that who we are and where we came from -- what “life” and the universe are all about -- must involve speculation. Theories abound but none can meet accepted standards of proof. We are left as individuals each to decide what it’s all about. To decide what’s real. And if everyone has five senses but not everyone is endowed with an active sixth sense then realism rather than idealism must be our guide.

The flaw in this argument is its reliance not on Mind to persuade but on matter. On the body’s ability to detect other physical objects. Objects that belong to the same material world as the bodies detecting them. And so what’s “real” isn’t established by the objectivity prized by science; it’s nothing more than bodies detecting themselves. It’s entirely subjective. Matter proclaiming that it truly exists from a mirror. An obvious departure from reasoning acknowledged by the philosophy of science but conveniently ignored by science itself.

The flaw is the absence of a perspective not of our material “reality” that’s objective. The absence of Logic-Love, the faculty of Mind-Intuition that recognizes and rejects flawed thinking that interferes with its function, which is to support understanding with logical explanation. To help us make sense of things. Realists who find refuge in their bodies’ five senses are not only running toward unthinking, self-referential matter. They’re running away from our only means of making sense: Logic-Love that explains.

It's all bias

But whether we’re realists or idealists is just our bias. Our personality types can’t lead us to the truth but they do entrench each of us in subjective bias. So it’s just my bias when I declare that of the two categories of values -- one based on the individual, the other based on groups or tribes -- only the individual aligns with the laws of cause and effect that define Reality and Creation. The bias of my version of a Mind-centered INTJ personality type. The Logic that supports it explains that the billions of us are actually replications of one Self, one Mind not many. The many version of this one Self is the version implied by its opposite. An opposite that must in every respect be the opposite of its host, the one Mind-Self that’s real. And so its opposite must be unreal -- an illusion.

I conclude that the values associated with the individual align with Reality and Creation because the individual -- the one Mind-Self -- is real and the values associated with its opposite -- the many selves, groups, tribes -- cannot be real. I do so not because my five senses tell me so but because Logic-Love accessible through Mind’s sixth sense, not body-brain, tells me so.

Our distinctly human tribal values

The values associated with tribes are entirely the product of body-brains programmed to express a distinctly human version of our predatory animal nature, our competitive herd instinct:

  • Where idealist-individual values support free choice in creativity realist-tribe values support the abdication of free choice in conformity.
  • Where the individual prizes intimacy and free self-expression in loving, non-competitive relationships, the tribe prizes sociability and scripted self-expression in competitive relationships.
  • Where individual values are directed toward equality and empowerment in horizontal relationships, tribal values are directed toward hierarchical relationships that empower top-down authority and disempower those beneath it.
  • Where individual values above all respect individual worth and free will, tribal values inherently disrespect both.

Which may make tribal values distinctly human: they seem to define the human character judging from its inept stewardship of its natural and human resources.

It also makes them wrong, suitable for opposites opposed to Reality and Creation but not for the one Mind born of Logic-Love to play an indispensable role in the creation and reciprocation of Worth. To raise children. This is who I believe we truly are, not automatons manipulated by tyrants to dominate and destroy one another in endless conflict..

Do we really have a choice?

The split mind of humanity oscillates between these competing codes of ethics that were clearly differentiated when Niccolo Machiavelli published The Prince in 1532. So what I propose with two incompatible takes on morality is not new. Yet its implications for the human character and its propensity toward self-destruction seem not to have penetrated our awareness. Not to the point where it would make a human course correction.

Survival without functioning within groups or tribes isn’t feasible when we are born into a species that is itself a tribe. We can imagine ourselves disciplined by individual morality but, as Machiavelli showed, the realities of survival in competition often subordinate it to tribal top-down authority. We allow ourselves to go off course because there seems to be no other choice, and this applies to idealists as well as to realists.

The ESFP body-brain centered personality type is opposed to this choice as well as to choice generally since it’s a function of Mind. Realists and their ESFP apotheosis continue to serve Machiavellian tribal values without recognizing that they’re incompatible with morality. Without understanding that the mirror they hold up to us is humanity’s unreal dark side. They’re wrong because they’re immoral, the source of wrongdoing.

Why conscience?

Why make the difference clear? So that we put the gift of free will to good use. So that in defining our character with values we will make the right choice: for respect for the laws of cause and effect and their source, Logic and Love inseparable. So that when we are divided into competing groups or tribes we stay true to our sovereignty and integrity as individuals and don’t let our values, our morality, be compromised no matter what self-serving top-down authority demands of us. So that we have a conscience that wills us to do what’s right and listen to it.

Does history offer any examples of realists stricken by conscience after they sacrificed their will to the will of the tribe? J. Robert Oppenheimer was overwhelmed by guilt for his part in producing the Bomb, Robert McNamara for prosecuting the tragedy that was the Vietnam War. Many others, then and now, wish that they had not betrayed their humanity to a false idol.

Conflicting values, conflicting stories

The Mind-centered personality type that values individuals and families, free will, creativity, and service tells one story. The body-brain centered personality type that values tribes, captivity, conformity, and top-down rule tells another. Stories with different objectives and steps for getting there. The individual storyline is culturally explicit because it puts human nature in a positive light. These are values we can be proud of. The tribal storyline is culturally implicit because it puts us in a negative light. Only a perverse pride could own the conquests of red army ants.

The two storylines are contradictory, which helps to explain the friction between their adherents.

  • If Mind-centered individual values tell the story of humanity parting with appearances to help its one Mind-Self regain self-awareness, acceptance of its innocence, and consciousness, the body-brain centered tribal values of realists accept things as they appear to be and take it from there, proceeding directly to instinct-driven action without any need for mind-changing reflection or deliberation.
  • If individual values affirm the worth of Creation and the competence of free-spirited individuals enabled and empowered by authority to take part in it, tribal values affirm the necessity of competition and the submission of individual wills to tribal authority to win it. “Winning” measured not by creativity and free expression but by dominance. By ownership, possession, and control.

The story told by an idealist’s values

An idealist’s values might look something like this:

Home-Relationship
Innocence-Beauty
Wholeness-Wellness
Enablement
Empowerment
Spontaneity-Creativity

The story it tells is of humanity that has a Home in Reality and a Relationship with its one Mind-Self’s parents, Logic-Love. A Home and Relationship that belong to Reality-Creation, not to our alternate “reality.” So, the central driving force behind this and the following values is the urgency of awakening to Reality and regaining awareness of Home and Relationship. A feat that humanity can pull off when the perfection and Beauty of Innocence replace guilt in its psyche -- its soul. An accomplishment that lies within the power of any individual guided by Logic-Love, not within any tribe.

The integrity of the individual is restored with the healing of the Mind corrupted and split by its mistaking its opposite -- its unreal shadow -- for an other self and by surrendering its free will to give it access. Being in a state of Wholeness and Wellness signifies that healing has taken place: the individual -- the one Mind-Self -- has regained its sovereignty and thus the capacity to choose freely. This state of Mind is prerequisite for the values that follow: Enablement of the individual to exercise free will with competence, through trial-and-error learning in our alternate reality and Empowerment of competence in Free Choice to be part of Creation when consciousness is restored.

The attributes that the one Mind-Self must have to perform in Reality are Spontaneity and Creativity. Attributes of Free Choice that cannot be compromised by external influence from any source including the Child’s parents, Logic-Love. This explains the necessity of training by experience in an unreal environment where the Child’s parents couldn’t interfere even if they wanted to and there can be no real consequences -- no harm done.

This is our mission from this idealist’s perspective. What about the realist?

The story told by a realist’s values

From the realist’s perspective its values might look like this:

Will
Instinct-Action
Emotion-Force
Dominance-Winning
Sociability-Likability

Our mission would be survival through unending competition and conflict -- pointlessness. But if we look behind the mystique of the “Triumph of the Will” to what it actually implies we might find the following.

Alienation-Disconnection
Guilt-Imperfection
Division-Sickness
Disablement
Disempowerment
Captivity-Enslavement

These are terms that apply across the board to the body-brain centered ESFP personality type, its exercise of top-down authority, and its tribal values. The story that it tells is of a copycat -- a parasite shadow-self. A derivation without a life of its own and therefore without originality. Entirely incapable of individuality and creativity, that borrows its attributes from its host and reverses them into their opposites. To understand its action agenda take the attributes of its host and reverse them, starting with its host’s core attribute, that it is one entity not many, an individual not a group or tribe.

Which makes the entire tribal value system unreal -- the fact that explains the copycat’s greatest fear: self-awareness. And its fanatical obsession with authoritarian control since without forced conformity its secret will be exposed: the emperor wears no clothes. The emperor is a thing made up, a forgery who has neither existence nor authority. The work of an illusionist. An apparition. A mere reflection, without substance, incapable of casting a reflection on its own.

Of the two systems only the individual system is valid. The tribalist-realist system is but a deception that distracts from the Truth by conflict and dominance. Not only unreal but dangerous and wrong. Destined to be undone and abandoned when our one Mind again chooses Logic and Love, its source and true Self. When it chooses Reality and Truth that know nothing of competition and conflict. That know only the intimacy of Love and the Logic and Reality of Creation.

Whither goest thou. . . ? 

From an idealist’s perspective, these are the values of the idealist and realist that define our character. Each with a split mind, each with a light and a dark side, neither perfect. In an alternate reality of ambiguous appearances, in the presence of competing biases, can we say what it means? 

In the 40s, before climate change and mass extinction were a concern, my back yard was full of fireflies. We called them lightning bugs. Little blinking lights floating silently, lazily in space. A reminder that August is for letting up, slowing down. That in the life of the cosmos one life on our little planet is one blink. Loaded with meaning and meaningless at the same time.

. . . Into the wastebasket of time

A mandala is a geometric design, symbolic of the universe, that can be intricately beautiful. One I admired was created painstakingly with colored grains of sand. After a prescribed period for display it was taken to the point where two rivers form a third river and dumped.  All that work. All that talent, creativity, and beauty tossed out as if it had no value. To symbolize what? Perhaps that when a life is lived and examined for all that it means, whether it served the cause of Mind or submitted to the dictates of body, the show is over. It can be thrown away.

Into the wastebasket we call time, that never needs to be emptied because it doesn’t contain anything. What’s here and gone in the blink of a firefly or a life has meaning, but without substance, without permanence that’s only possible with timelessness, its meaning is here and gone with it. Meaning in the context of the temporal that’s meaningless in the context of the eternal.

The eternal, where there is no competition and dominance, only truth, creativity, trust, innocence, and intimacy.  Where it’s Real and the Idealist is the realist.

Published on Leave a comment on The Abdication of Parenting: When Parent Doesn’t Receive Grandparent

How do grandparents want to be received?

It’s likely that children will turn their parents into grandparents one day. Likely that their children’s grandparents will be eager to do their part to help their grandchildren get off to a good start. Eager to form a bond with their grandchildren that brings the love, role modeling, and support into their lives that only grandparents can bring: gentle loving kindness with patience, humor, and wisdom that only experience can bring.

How will the new grandparents want to be received by their grandchildren’s parents? With warmth and respect for their place in their children’s extended families. With awareness of the promise of grandparenting as well as its limitations. With patience and good humor while the grandparents adjust to family dynamics – personalities, psychologies, philosophies, relationships, conflicting motivations, and irrationalities that give each family its unique character. That make it either an incubator of creativity, an island of stability for children, a nuthouse, or a horror show.

The attention that children need

But, above all, the new grandparents will want to be received with sensitivity to their children’s response to grandparenting, so that the attention their children may want, the relationship that provides them with the love, role modeling and support they may welcome and need from their grandparents, can develop in peace. In an atmosphere of gentle loving kindness, uncomplicated by adult rivalry and friction. By distractions that interfere with learning and growth nurtured by innocence, trust, and playfulness.

How will the new grandparents want to be received? As three-dimensional human beings possessed of character and values, free will and judgment, that can be trusted to fit in without compromising their own integrity or the integrity of their grandchildren’s family. To respect and support parental roles and responsibilities while keeping them separate from their own. To enrich their grandchildren’s lives with all their gifts – unique perspectives, talents, independent judgment, and experience as well as time and attention – without imposition or expectation. To be heard when conditions obligate them to speak up, by responsible parents obligated to listen.

The opportunity to be there for family

How will the new grandparents want to be received? As sympathetic partners in shared purpose: the raising and nurturing of precious new lives. As friends who can be trusted to be and do whatever the situation calls for: to be there when the coast is clear or to respect distance when it isn’t. To move forward in harmony when minds and hearts are one or to pause to reflect when they aren’t. To promote understanding with honesty and integrity that works for the benefit of the grandchildren. And to stop transgressions that put grandchildren at risk.

Parents who receive the new grandparents as they want to be practice a wisdom and a gentle loving kindness of their own. They’re seeing the connection between the reception they give grandparents today and the reception their children and their spouses will give them another day. A contribution to their wellbeing that could make the difference between lives blessed with possibilities or drained of meaning. The possibility of experiencing the intimacy, playfulness, vulnerability, and trust that is the love of a grandchild. The opportunity to be there for precious human beings – for family. Parents who receive grandparents as they want to be are being kind to themselves as well as to others.

The parents who need correction

Parents who don’t do so aren’t seeing the connection. They fall victim to a lapse of thinking, of understanding. To the short-sightedness of immaturity characteristic of children who can only take in circumstances in the moment. Who lack a wider vision that takes in concerns and consequences beyond their immediate environment. Whose definition of what matters is limited to the here and now.

Parents jealous of authority that can’t tolerate the benign presence of a grandparent reveal a more profound incapacity: intolerance of other perspectives, critical feedback that doing their job depends on. Infantile self-absorption, a sure sign of arrested development. Obsessive fear of criticism invites criticism. Parents whose immaturity and irresponsibility deny grandparenting need educating, training, and discipline. They don’t need tact and diplomacy, superficial pleasantries that mask the reality that lies behind appearances. They need correction, the same as children who haven’t learned how to behave.

Because that’s what they are: grownup children who misbehave. The more recalcitrant they are, the more resistant to correction they are, the more they require it. With no-nonsense honesty, because the more they insist on protecting their “authority” the less protection they’re affording their children. Role modeling self-absorbed immaturity isn’t “parenting.” It’s the abdication of parenting.